The distinctive suit of cards inlays along the 32"-scale neck would become a signature of Ronnie Lane, but this is perhaps the earliest example of that motif on one of his instruments. Two noteworthy Telecaster technical developments also marked 1967. However, players were quick to discover that the Telecasters three-position switch could be precariously balanced in the two in-between switch positions to deliver in-phase or out-of-phase sounds (depending on the polarity of the pickups) in which both pickups were on (an unintentional design feature exploited by players to even greater extent on the Stratocaster). From that year onward, the Custom Shop would repeatedly elevate the Telecaster from mere utilitarian workhorse to work of art. So which is it? In addition to many artist models and the ongoing American Vintage series Telecaster guitars, Fender has introduced a variety of Telecaster variations, from authentically traditional to distinctively modified, from pristine to battered and from high-end to budget-conscious. Hynde named the band the Pretenders, and they recorded their first single, a cover of the Kinks Stop Your Sobbing, later that year. Richards, in fact, became something of a Telecaster connoisseur during the 1970s, acquiring and further nicknaming instruments of various vintages, including a blonde 1954 model (Malcolm) and a sunburst 1966 model (Sonny). Its difficult, in writing, to do justice to what it was that Buchanan was able to do with a guitar. Back at Fender headquarters, Telecaster experimentation continued apace by institutionalizing the most popular mod players had been making for a few years alreadyreplacing the single-coil neck pickup with a fatter-sounding humbucking pickup. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/feN8kZA5H3Q?rel=0. Strummer wielded his 1966 Telecaster with authoritative swagger through two other hit Clash albums of the period,Sandinista! The Who had become known not only for their visceral sound, but also for their violent stage act, which by late 1965 regularly culminated in Townshend smashing his guitar at the end of set-closing anthem My Generation. Smashing up the delicate Rickenbacker guitars Towshend was known for playing had become prohibitively expensive, however, and in a money-saving move he began switching to Telecasters for My Generation, as they were less expensive and certainly easier to repair. We compiled the 20 most mentioned stores and quickly realized there were too many great photos we'd have to cut in order to get them all in one gallery. Unlike many existing guitars at the time, the Telecasters strings were pulled straight over the nut, with all the tuners on one side of the headstockideas that Leo himself said he borrowed from 19-century Istrian folk guitars and Viennese Staufer guitars. At Fender, 1973 saw the last of the three major design revisions to the Telecaster. OnLed Zeppelin, Jimmy Page played a psychedelic-painted Telecaster (given to him by Jeff Beck) on tracks including Dazed and Confused, Good Times Bad Times, Communication Breakdown, How Many More Times, You Shook Me and more. Scotty Moore used one much like it on his earliest recordings with Elvis. In Nashville in July 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio recorded an energetic rock version of 1951 jump blues song The Train Kept-A-Rollin; lead guitarist Paul Burlison used his Telecaster to play one of the first recorded instancesif notthefirst recorded instanceof a contemporary fuzz guitar sound. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/xfBF4rr7FiA?rel=0. The ensuing vacuum was filled with schmaltzy ballads, reverb-drenched teen idols and girl groups that, while they had a charm of their own, werent especially guitar oriented. ", Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/mq7y2xjoav0?rel=0, And in what is widely regarded as the greatest rock n roll film ever made, 1956sThe Girl Cant Help It, the Telecaster (in its single-pickup Esquire version) puts in a pair of appearances. Telecaster? Elsewhere in London of that era, another band coalesced that would achieve even greater heights; the very loftiest heights, in fact. True, the layout was simpletwo knobs and a three-position switch, but their combined function was not as simple as might be supposed at first. While Fender Japan now became the worlds main producer of Fender instruments, Schultz and his staff established headquarters for the newly renamed Fender Musical Instruments Corporation in Brea, Calif., and acquired a 14,000-square-foot factory in Corona, Calif., in October 1985. As the mid-1970s gave way to the latter part of the decade, Burton and Cropper remained busier than ever. King and Clarence Gatemouth Brown took readily to the Telecaster. The Telecaster would become the foundation of the Bakersfield Sound pioneered in the later 1950s and popularized in the 1960s by Owens and his band, the Buckaroos, Merle Haggard and the Strangers, and others. TheRolling Stonereprint led to interest from public television station WNET, flagship of the then-new PBS network, which produced an hour-long documentary,Introducing Roy Buchanan, which aired that November and shifted his career into high gear. This control arrangement was simplified in 1952 to what became known as the conventional Telecaster control layout. Punk reared its reactionary spiky-haired head, thumbing its safety-pinned nose at the establishment and at the lumbering blues-based, psychedelic and prog giants who ruled the first half of the 1970s. Strontium 90 only lasted a few gigs and several furtive demos, but the Sting-Copeland-Summers combination showed fantastic chemistry, and Summers replaced original Police guitarist Henry Padovani that August and the rest is history. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/mJK-fXBeJkQ?rel=0, The Clash was also at its artistic and commercial peak in the first half of the 1980s. Perhaps no single 12-month period during the 1960s testified to the Telecasters amazing workhorse versatility more than the musically explosive year of 1967. This headstock has flourishes fit for a kingpossibly of clubs. Fender briefly put the guitar into production, but its unusual tonality and considerable weight made it a short-lived addition to the line. A fellow Californian and early Bakersfield Sound devotee also started racking up impressive chart successes, tooin late 1966, Merle Haggard and the Strangers hit number one with their seventh single, Im a Lonesome Fugitive.. The Les Paul with a Backup Output Jack? Artistically, the Telecaster served as the main musical voice of two monumental debut albums recorded in 1968, both by U.K. artists. And when the great Muddy Waters, the man who electrified Delta blues, first visited England in 1958, he shocked audiences who were expecting folksy acoustic sounds by blasting out loud, stinging blues on his Telecaster. For many guitarists and collectors, a 1953 blackguard Telecaster is considered the Holy Grail of all Teles. An archetypal Telecaster moment came in 1975 when Long Branch, N.J., native Bruce Springsteen achieved breakout success with his third album, the epicBorn to Run. For many guitarists and collectors, a 1953 blackguard Telecaster is considered the Holy Grail of all Teles. Since then Fender has offered a wealth of modern Telecaster models designed to suit the playing, personality and pockets of any guitarist. In 1951, putting the selector switch in the rear (bridge) position delivered both pickups, with the rear knob serving as a blend control that governed the amount of neck pickup sound mixed into the bridge pickup sound. The front knob always controlled master volume, but the rear knob wasnotalways a master tone knob. The album established Springsteen as a major star, and its famous black-and-white cover showed him leaning on Clarence The Big Man Clemmons shoulder and slinging his Esquire? Second, musicians Gene Parsons and Clarence White (the Byrds) invented the Parsons/White String Pull, later known as the B-Bender, and equipped Whites 1956 Telecaster with it (Fender would release its own B-Bender-equipped Telecaster 33 years later). Introduced in the fall of 1950, the result was the Broadcaster. In the country world, Luther Perkins accompanied Johnny Cash from 1954 on by playing bright, catchy lines on a Telecaster and an Esquire. Fender previously released a limited number of meticulous Rocky recreations via the Fender Custom Shop in 2020, but now this release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy the sound and history behind this iconic guitar. Strummer accepted an invitation to be lead singer in a new band with guitarists Mick Jones and Keith Levene, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Terry Chimes. It didnt take long to become an essential element in the arsenal of studio veterans nationwide and A-list session veterans Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts and Tommy Tedesco all got Telecasters. The color of the pickguard was changed from black to white in 1954; its pickup selector switch tip was changed from the original round type to the top hat type in 1955. Fender instruments and amps were fun, tough and affordable rather than delicate and expensive. 1975 is also notable in the Telecaster story because of the release of a relatively obscure debut album,American Music, by a Washington, D.C., trio called Danny and the Fat Boys. And so the Telecaster struck the final notes of its third decade, put to greater use than ever by U.S. and U.K. guitarists, veterans and newcomers alike. Though largely unchanged during the 1950s, a few minor tweaks to the Telecasterwereimplemented in the guitars first decade though. To remedy this situation, CBS enlisted former Yamaha executives William Bill Schultz as president of Fender and Dan Smith as director of marketing for electric guitars. But the ever-ubiquitous Telecaster found itself right at home there, too. Strangely perhaps, things got off to a slow start, because real rock n roll had all but disappeared in the United States by 1960. Thus firmly established, the Telecaster-driven Bakersfield Sound would rival Nashville throughout the decade as its other hit-making artists ascended the charts. The Telecaster, however, quite separate from the intentions of its makers, fed the emergence only a few years later of rock n roll and the explosion in U.S. youth culture that came with it, and by the end of the 1950s it was an unqualified success as an indispensable workhorse instrument for guitarists of many musical styles and genres nationwide. The British Invasion of 1964 needs little introduction. Orangewood Guitars Oliver Acoustic Giveaway! Fender Telecaster?? It had a simple black pickguard (of fiber or Bakelite) held on with five screws. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The current value for one in excellent, all-original condition is $25,000. Anthony Zemaitis was a British born cabinet-maker-turned-luthier. The first wasBlack Claw & Country Fever, by virtuoso country/rockabilly/rock/R&B guitarist Albert Lee, subsequently widely known to many as Mr. While Leo Fender and the staff of his small Southern California instrument- and amp-making company knew that theyd built a revolutionary new guitar when they introduced the Telecaster in early 1951, they had no idea of the size and scope of the musical revolution their unusual new invention would start. Fender and its new Telecaster guitar were ideally placed to take advantage of all of this, because Fender didnt belong to the stodgy old world of high-end guitar craft. This would keep Fender instruments in production and combat the cheap copies that were voraciously eating away at Fenders Far East sales. It now suffered from a bleak reputation for producing, as noted guitar author and historian Tom Wheeler put it in his 2011 history of the Fender Custom Shop,The Dream Factory, boat anchor guitars, and revenues were starting to decline along with quality. Its title track was an enormous hit; both it and the album introduced the world to the impeccable phrasing of Missouri-born guitarist/producer/songwriter Steve Cropper. The amp is capable of about 10 to 14 watts of output power. With that new mid-80s beginning under Bill Schultz, Fender started by concentrating on quality rather than quantity, beginning with a small number of vintage reissue guitars and redesigned back-to-basics modern instruments dubbed American Standard models. It was a great idea whose time had come, and it changed music in the 50s-era United States. Owens rebelled against the slick, string-laden Nashville countrypolitan sound so popular at the time by championing a loud, raw and stripped-down sound fueled by the brash twang of his Telecasterwhat came to be called the Bakersfield Sound., Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/uDmDwvZSlPw?rel=0. The 1970s began for the Telecaster with its two most acclaimed U.S. masters making some big changes. It debuted in early 1951 as an innovative new kind of instrument from a small upstart Southern California maker that served the regions Western swing and dance band guitarists. They couldnt possibly have. Thats when Summers met Howletts other recruits, bassist/vocalist Gordon Sting Sumner and drummer Stewart Copeland, who had already formed a trio of their own earlier that year called the Police. In late 1959, these English kids included 16-year-olds Keith Richards and George Harrison, 15-year-olds Jeff Beck and James Page, 14-year-olds Eric Clapton and Peter Townshend, 13-year-old schoolmates Roger Syd Barrett and David Gilmour, 17-year-old Andy Summers and a great many more. They mastered rock n roll and made it their own on any third-rate guitar they could get their hands on, never dreaming that in very short order they would be the ones to re-introduce the formexplosively soto the land of its birth. In July 1964, a London quintet called the Yardbirds appeared on Granada Television programGo Tell it on the Mountain, playing Louise and I Wish You Would. What was noteworthy about the appearance is that while so many British groups at first played guitars by makers other than Fender, the Yardbirds 19-year-old guitarist, Eric Clapton, tore up both songs on a red Telecaster. Nonetheless, he remained a revered post-punk figure as the Clash soldiered on until 1986, and he too was honored (posthumously; Strummer passed away in 2002) by Fender in the late 2000s with a tribute Telecaster model that reproduced his battle-hardened guitar down to the last detail. With his band, the charmingly named Snakestretchers, he release indie solo debutBuch and the Snakestretcherslate in 1971 before inking a deal with Polydor Records, for which he recorded five solo albums before moving to Atlantic Records in 1976. Across the Atlantic, sweeping change had struck the U.K. music scene in mid-decade. In its first decade, the Telecaster had established and proven itself. Out on the U.S. West Coast, Fender continued the successful experimentation with the Telecaster that began with 1968s hollowed-out Thinline model, introducing a new version on which both single-coil pickups were replaced by the companys first-ever humbucking pickups.